Exhibition

12 Oct
2016
—
26 Mar
2017

Flip and Two Twisters (Trilogy)

Intense, frightening and beautiful, the expertly engineered, Trilogy is Lye’s most compelling sculpture.

Trilogy performs at 12pm midday and 2pm weekdays (except Tuesdays) and 11am, 1pm and 3pm on weekends for 10mins.

Suspended from the ceiling, a large loop (Flip) and two long strips of stainless steel (Twisters) are spun and contorted into a motorised dance. Tension builds in the flexing steel, followed by sudden whiplash stops. The thunderous crash of Trilogy reverberates around the gallery, a sound described by Lye as like ‘icicles tumbling down your back’.

Described in Lye’s day as inducing terror in the audience, Trilogy is one of Lye’s masterpieces. A sculptural counterpart to the cinematic thrill of his film Free Radicals (1958), Trilogy holds a special place in the heart of the Govett-Brewster, built for the 1977 exhibition Kinetic Works – the first exhibition of Lye’s work in his homeland – and a historic part of the Govett-Brewster’s collection ever since.

Flip and Two Twisters (Trilogy) is the second in a series of exhibitions presented in the Large Works that explore Len Lye’s large scale kinetic sculpture.